I am writing this review only after being here a few hours. I paid for one whole week.

First let me rate the appearance of the building: The building itself is old and in desperate need of some painting and renovation. There is a musty smell when you walk into the lobby. The elevators are old and slow. You have to wait an eternity to get up or down. The balconies are made of glass, so when you sit to enjoy your view, all you can notice is the the film of dirt on the glass. My immediate feeling upon arrival was, I can't believe I'm going to be here one week.

Next I will describe my arrival experience, and the condo, (808), that we paid almost 400 per night for one week.
Once I gave the Sales Manager my credit card, not before, she sent me the check in and check out instructions, check in 3pm, check out 9:00 a.m.
She says this is because the cleaning people have three units to clean.
So as you can see one of your days is basically stolen.

I didn't like this but was okay with it because the manager emailed me that I could arrive any time on my day of arrival because there was no one occupying the condo.

So I didn't mind the early check out since I could arrive early on check in day. From where I live, It's a 7 hour drive to Destin. I arrived at around 12:30p.m.. The instructions indicated that key was in a box. No need to check in. I was traveling by myself and 4 year old daughter, husband and teenage kids to follow in a couple of days.

I had the truck loaded with bags and food. There was no one available to help me, so I loaded two carts with as much stuff as I could, and made it up to the condo. To my surprise, the place is not ready. Dirty sheets still there dirty towels, dirty brooms and mops.

I call the rental manager and she does not believe me when I tell her that the place is dirty and not ready. I have to actually describe to her how there are dirty sheets, etc. beds not made, etc. She doesn't apologize. She just tells me that she didn't know it was still dirty. They must not have had a chance to do it yesterday. She said she was going to call them and call me back. Again, no apologies were made.

She does not call me back. Fifteen minutes later I call her back. She tells me that they are still cleaning the other condos and when they arrive to clean this one it will take them two hours to clean. Not what you want to hear after a 3:00 a.m. wake up and a seven hour drive. At this point I have two carts full of luggage and other items sitting in the hallway, and a 4-year-old.
The manager tells me to just leave it sitting in the hallway. Again, she never says sorry for the inconvenience or anything of that nature.

There is no way I was going to leave my stuff in the hallway so I asked her if I could leave it in a corner inside the condo. I head back downstairs where I left my car parked at the front of the building. When I get there, two security people are about to tow my car because they felt it had been there too long. I said sorry and explained what happened upstairs.

I get back in the car and decide to go have lunch somewhere. My toddler quickly falls asleep once I get her in the car. I drive to an eating area and realize that I can't leave the car in the hot sun because some of the things I have in the car( Easter eggs, etc.) would melt. Since the building had a covered deck, I headed back to Surfside and decide to just wait in my car.

Two hours later I call the manager back since I had not heard anything from her. She tells me that she was going to call and would get back to me. She doesn't. I call back and she tells me that it should be ready because they told her 30 minutes ago that it would be. It was 4pm when I finally re-entered the condo, three and a half hours later.

To make a long story short, this was the worst customer service I have ever experienced in this industry. The sad thing is that the owners are actually paying this lady to manage this property for them.

The condo is a nice size. It has three large bedrooms all with views of the beach and a balcony. The condo is in desperate need of renovation. It needs painting, new furniture, etc. The closets are not very clean. The drawers where you would store your clothing were dirty with sand and crumbs, stuff from the renters past. There are area rugs everywhere that are extremely filthy and need replacing.

As for entertainment, there is a small (27 inch? Definitely not 32) flat screen TV in the living room. The rest of the rooms have a small (not flat screen) old TV. The master bedroom has one of those dinosaur TVs with a VHS player, no DVD, and no remote control. To play music, there is a dated boom box type of music player to play CDs and cassettes, no input for Aux. That is it.


The Master bed was comfortable except that the linen on the bed is cheap hotel white type, meaning not soft. There were no additional covers, beside sheets, in case you got cold at night. So my daughter and I froze all night. The only cover besides sheets that the bed had was that red cover you see in the picture. That is the first thing I take off a bed when I stay in a hotel because I know they don't get washed after each renter leaves. They just put it back on the bed. So I will go out today and purchase some covers for warmth at night.

As for the furniture, like I said, it is old, cheap and worn out. It could use replacing. The kitchen is okay. It is not very big. It is advertised as fully stocked with supplies to cook with. Well, everything I've seen is very cheap in quality. The pots and pans are the type you would find at the dollar store.

After the ordeal of check- in, I took my daughter to the beach, and that is the only positive thing I have to say. The beach is wonderful. Sand is white, soft and beautiful. Seeing her enjoy the beach made me forget bad experience yesterday.

I wanted to write, a review while everything was fresh in my mind. Unfortunately we have already paid for a one-week stay in this place ($ 2300). I will just try to make the best of it. As long as the kids have a good time, that is all that matters.

I, however, will not stay here again and do not recommend it. Next time I will not rent if there are no reviews. There were no reviews of this place. It's advertised on VRBO, #221004. It is definitely several steps down than what we're accustomed to. It may be perfect for somebody, but not not for us.

A consumer.